actually, the elegant way to do it is to have 1 horizontal and 1 vertical button. on drop, it would know if the mouse is over 50% of the box's middle, and split that way. 4 buttons is a lot of toolbar space.

i saw that - problem is you don't know which window (>1) has focus so you don't know where it's going to split. and if you go and click on a window, traversing another to get to the button can change that if it has mouseover handling.

That's why I use <code>document.commandDispatcher.focusedWindow</code> in the button code for window object. You must focus the window you want to split first, and then click the button to split the window.

So I guess I'm too late with my little http://www.geocities.com/max1million/sp ... 0.5-fx.zip . I just got done with some fixing up of the navigation buttons (back,forward,stop/reload,home) display, title, and stuff mentioned before. But it still one only adds one panel and uses the theme's icons. Open panel to left, bottom or right (left,middle or right click) with current URL from Split on context menu.

zoolcar9, thanks for pointing out the Split Browser option to hide those side arrow buttons. I should have looked harder before speaking.

alta88, since you seem to be in touch with Piro, how about considering another option for those buttons - having them appear only if the cursor hits the middle portion or near a corner (in an area xx pixels long) of the side, top or bottom edge. Then the user would more or less have to intentionally hit the arrow if desired rather than having it appear all the time. As it is now, for example, the arrow appears every time the cursor is moved to a toolbar or the right slider.

@max - if you call it SplitPanelLite, make it userchrome.js ready, make the code very small, you will have a market

@ed - i just sent him an email, like anyone can from his website contact.. i agree the splitting is not efficient. the current buttons appear all the time on mouseover, are too small one way and too big the other, timeout too fast, cursor should change to a 'hand' pointer. your idea is better but would still have cursors pop up unintended buttons frequently for a very infrequent use.

i'm sticking with the drag and drop button - which i realize can just be one button. if a pane is divided into 9 equal boxes, the middle box on the top/bottom/left/right receives the drop and the split is thus determined. i just don't know how to code it maybe those optimoz guys might get interested they figure out stuff like 'offset senstivity from 45° to make a diagonal motion'.

alta88, I think Piro must be reading this thread, because he's already issued an update of Split Browser which seems to reflect some of this discussion!

Just some further nits on those top, bottom, side buttons. I think they should have a slightly different shape - not quite so long and narrow, maybe shorter still and a bit wider than the left/right buttons are now. And, as alta88 mentioned, they should stay displayed just for just a bit longer time to give the user more time to click - maybe 50% longer than now.

And, on my system, the button shading size does not match the button border size on the left and right buttons. And the top and bottom buttons are wider than the left/right buttons, with again the shading not matching the border locations.

Yea, I got the message too but we can ignore that. The problem is why my script works for me but doesn't work for you. I don't have any clue what causes it, probably there's conflict with other extension.